Automating Key Financial Processes for Real-Time Insights – Vima Foods

Before:

Bogged Down by Limited Data Traceability in Spreadsheets

Prior to implementing OneStream, Vima Foods was using a spreadsheet-based reporting with limited data traceability. Data was generated in Libra ERP, but integration was not automated: at each close, every subsidiary would produce a local report by loading the data into Excel and calculating P&L and Balance Sheet for the respective company.

The added challenge of dealing with multiple data sources, different currencies, and inter-company eliminations forced Vima Foods to re-evaluate their financial practices and seek a tool that could provide a single version of the truth, with the agility to support their growth.

Solution:

OneStream and its Extensible Dimensionality®

After a careful selection process, the company chose OneStream due to its ability to integrate different data sources using web services, powerful BI Blend, Relational Blend and drill-down functionalities, as well as add-on Marketplace solutions that allow them to extend the platform in the future.

After:

Enhanced Reporting with Analytical Blend

The primary objective of this project was to automate key financial processes and gain insight into real-time data. We opted for a co-development model, with Vima Foods and Spaulding Ridge working as a team to cover two time zones, Europe and Latin America. Our goal was to build the Minimum Viable Solution that would serve as the basis for modeling next use cases with the help of OneStream’s Extensible Dimensionality® feature.

Another primary requirement was maximizing data visibility with granular access controls, so that decision-making across the company could be backed by accurate and timely information. Vima Foods needed to know at all times who, what, when, where, and why of each key concept, be it sales, purchases, expenses, margin, management ratios, inventory, or KPIs. The Analytical Blend functionality allows the company to gain insight into Operating Expenses and Income by integrating different dimensions and detail into their data model, which in turn enables Vima Foods to measure profitability of each action and have confidence in the numbers.

In a question of months, we were able to:

• Automate key financial processes
• Develop a Single Source of Truth (SSOT)
• Gain visibility into real-time data
• Provide direct integration with Libra ERP
• Eradicate bottlenecks cause by manual spreadsheet monitoring
• Enrich visualization with drill-in capabilities from accounting to management

Vima Foods can now access all of their financial data in a few clicks, with the ability to navigate from a global view to the transactional level. Key financial processes are less time-consuming, more reliable, and efficient overall. Rich, agile dashboards for Product and Customer data analytics are a big improvement over QlikView’s fixed reports that the company used previously, which translates into faster and better-informed decisions. Using Marketplace solutions, Vima Foods is planning to extend their new CPM platform to include FP&A or Consolidation models in the future.